Dental surgery and particularly surgery for the correction or amelioration of periodontal disease is often made difficult and challenging because of the restricted access permitted by the architecture of the mouth. These inherent limitations may prevent or restrict the desired optimal surgical procedures, because of the inability to gain appropriate access to the treatment area with surgical knives having cutting edges of the desired shape, size and approach angulation. It is additionally important to have readily available to the surgeon, a variety of sterile blades of various cutting edge configurations. For best access in locations such as distals of maxillary molars and linguals of mandibular teeth, it is also important to have available an instrument in which the cutting edge of a short blade is positioned perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the instrument handle, rather than a straight extension of the blade handle.
Several instruments for meeting such surgical requirements are currently available, but each has disadvantages. ORBAN and KIRKLAND knives are manufactured in sets with various blades shapes and approach configurations achieved among the instruments of the set. Such instruments are expensive, and additionally require exacting maintenance. They must be sharpened by a skilled person and otherwise well cared for to insure a sharp true edge and a surgically sterile blade at the time of use. Another approach which overcomes the latter problems is to use disposable surgical blades maintained in sterile packages until mounted upon a handle designed to receive them. The BARD-PARKER, HUFREIDY, and AMERICAN SAFETY RAZOR instruments employ such blades. While providing a variety blade shapes for ready use, the instrument approach angulation in the latter products restricts their use. Characteristically, disposable blades are mounted to their handles by providing the blade base with a rectangular longitudinal slot having sections of varying size which is placed over lugs in the handle and locked in place by sliding the blade into a conforming recess in the handle. As a consequence of these mounting methods, the disposable blade becomes a straight extension of the handle greatly limiting the utility of the instrument in areas of restricted access as compared with a short blade mounted perpendicular to the handle axis.
It is desirable, therefore to provide a surgical blade locking mechanism employable on the service end of an elongated instrument handle which overcomes the cited disadvantages and provides a versatile instrument for oral surgery employing a short disposable blade with an orientation perpendicular to the instrument handle axis.